An American Running Back in London

By

Jason Gay

October 3, 2012

Mostly he walked. He walked all around London. Down narrow streets to Hyde Park, to the Thames River, to bustling Piccadilly Circus, hidden in the crowd like an anonymous tourist. "Just kind of hanging out, man," Barry Sanders said. He saw "Les Miserables," which he also saw in New York. He saw another show, but he couldn't remember which one. Occasionally, somebody would recognize him. But usually they did not. He met some students from the London School of Economics. They talked a little football. American football.

Watch More Off-Duty on YouTube

This was a little more than 13 years ago, the summer of 1999, when Sanders, then 31 years old, still healthy, closing in on the all-time rushing record, decided to walk away from the NFL. The news was a shock to his league, his team, to the city of Detroit, and it took a long time for the story to sort itself out—how an adored superstar could suddenly leave a franchise he defined, with so much football talent presumably left.

But when I met Sanders the other day in New York, where he was in town to promote a traveling exhibit for the Pro Football Hall of Fame called Gridiron Glory, I wasn't interested in rehashing the reasons why he left the Lions, or the contract acrimony that followed. I wanted to know about London. I wanted to know how one of the game's greatest players had escaped a frenzy by vanishing across the Atlantic—by himself, no agent, no publicist, no entourage, a solo traveler. Like the man himself, the story of Barry Sanders's European retirement vacation had always been something of a mystery.

Sanders smiled. He is 44 now, still fit and trim under his yellow Hall of Fame Jacket. It'd been a long time since he'd thought about that trip. That was July of 1999, and the Lions were about to kick off training camp. His reps had told the Lions he wasn't coming back. And that's when he got on the plane, at Detroit Metro Airport.

"I think people saw me on the plane and they put two and two together—'They're starting training camp soon, why is he on a plane to Europe?'" he said. The flight wound up delayed. "Really, really delayed," Sanders said. "To the point where we had cameras and news stations show up, trying to get on the plane."

Eventually he got to the U.K., to Gatwick Airport, where he told reporters, "I don't know the right way to retire. This is just my way of doing it." News stories suggested Sanders was going to stay in London before pushing on to Paris and Amsterdam.

But he wound up staying the whole time in London. "I actually made the mistake of renting a car," Sanders said. He recalled driving on the opposite side of the road, and the confusing roundabouts. "I had quite a time. But I kind of liked the adventure of it."

He said he stayed at a hotel near the Thames. He couldn't remember which hotel. It wasn't his first time in London—the Lions had played a preseason game there in 1993. The city seemed like an attractive hideout for someone looking to outrun big news. "I just didn't know how crazy it would be once I made the announcement," Sanders said. "It seemed like a good idea."

He said he didn't know anybody in London. He walked around and ate by himself. This didn't bother him. He'd always been comfortable alone. He'd grown up the seventh child in a family of 11 kids, in a noisy house where solitude was rare. "I really love peace and quiet," he said.

Sanders said he knew what was going on back home. He spoke on the phone to his family about the uproar. He knew people would be stunned. But he said he didn't feel any twinges of regret. "I was relieved," Sanders said. "I felt I'd done the right thing."

In Detroit, Sanders's sudden retirement was massive news. Reporters seized on every nugget of the story. "We talked about putting me on a plane to London," said longtime Detroit sportscaster Bernie Smilovitz of WDIV-TV. "But we couldn't find Barry when he was in Detroit. We didn't know how we'd find him when we got to London."

The escape itself had been Barry Sanders-like. There had always been something elusive about Sanders—not just his running style, in which he brilliantly ribboned around defensive lines, shoulders low, hips swiveling—but also his personality. He was polite, but not a spotlight seeker, unknown in many ways even to people who worked with him. "I always knew when the time came [to retire] it would not be done in the traditional way," said Sanders's agent, C. Lamont Smith.

"It didn't surprise me," said Chuck Schmidt, then the Lions executive vice president and COO. "He was always a man of few words, and I could see him wanting to leave town and get away from all the publicity."

"I would have probably done the same thing myself," the former Lions coach Bobby Ross said.

Another football icon, Jim Brown, had been in London (filming "The Dirty Dozen") when he retired early from the Cleveland Browns. What's strange about hearing Sanders tell his story is how impossible it seems in today's climate. Could this kind of escape happen in a social media era? Sanders would almost surely be busted on a London street by a smart phone. Twitter would pin him down.

Sanders stayed in London two weeks, and then went back home, to a new life out of football. He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2004. He remains beloved, and in recent years, his public profile has increased, this traveling Gridiron Glory exhibit the latest example. His son, Barry J. Sanders, a top high-school football player, is now at Stanford. Meanwhile, Sanders has kept traveling. He's been to Brazil. Japan. Kenya. He said he was hoping to join an NFL trip to China. He wants to go to Rio again. He hopes to ski the Alps.

"Maybe Antarctica," Barry Sanders said. That sounded perfect. Maybe Antarctica was the last place a football superstar could find peace and quiet.

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.